True Stories That Make Movies Better

The Cracked Podcast #69April 6, 2015

Pop quiz, hotshot. Did you know that ‘Speed’, the Keanu-on-a-bus 90s action tent-pole was originally developed as a completely different film? At first, the script was written as an ensemble drama about a cast of strangers on a bus working together to stop a terrorist, but once Keanu signed on, it was rewritten as the fast and dumb classic we know and love today.

So many huge Hollywood films have little-known stories like these, where one decision changes the entire film and the lives of everyone involved. In other cases, these stories don’t provide an alternate history as much as they provide a new context that makes re-watching the film a completely different experience.

This week on the podcast, Jack O’Brien is joined by Earwolf’s Matt Gourley to discuss some of the stories unearthed from his podcast ‘I Was There Too’ and then chats with Cracked editor David Christopher Bell about overlooked behind the scenes stories from the films of David O. Russell, Stanley Kubrick and more.